In recent years, many correctional facilities have extended liberal telephone privileges to inmates to promote community and family ties that contribute positively to inmates' personal development. In the interest of promoting wholesome family ties, hundreds of thousands of telephone calls are permitted to be made each day by inmates of correctional facilities. Unfortunately, serious abuse of the telephone system has been noted relating, in particular, to inmate participation in security threat group activity.
In response to the identification of a growing number of security threat group affiliated inmates in correctional facilities across the country, in recent years, a number of Department of Corrections facilities (DOCs) have attempted to identify, validate and certify street gangs and gang members who are incarcerated in their systems. The term Security Threat Group refers to group, alliance, gang or inmate organizations that have been determined to be acting in concert so as to pose a threat to the public, DOC staff, other inmates or to the orderly administration of a correctional institution. Inmate affiliation with a security threat group has been determined in a number of ways, such as by observing behavior, decoding graffiti, observing body markings, clothing arrangements, handshakes, and the like. Security threat group affiliation may also be identified by intelligence gathering concerning an inmate's associations with known security threat group members such as by monitoring the inmate's telephone calls.
Correctional facilities maintain control systems for processing inmate calls. Each time an inmate places a call from a correctional facility, a call detail record (CDR) of the call is created. The call detail records of inmate calls typically include the name of the inmate (and/or inmate identification number), the inmate's location, the number called and the date, time and duration of the call. Inmate call control systems may also include certain call monitoring facilities that enable correctional facility personnel to monitor and record inmate calls.